Posted
by
timothy
on Monday November 29, 2004 @01:48AM
from the world-wars-lead-to-medical-breakthroughs dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Some scientists are questioning whether the robotic mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is worth the risk and cost. After the Columbia disaster, NASA cancelled its shuttle mission to Hubble, and replaced it with a robotic mission. However, the price tag of the robotic mission is between $1 billion and $2 billion, almost the cost of a new space telescope. Optics expert Duncan Moore is unsure whether the mission will bring the most scientific return per dollar spent. Hubble director Steven Beckwith says the mission will lead to breakthroughs in space robotics."

That said, all science is good scienceWhile true, the real question if whether that $1-2b could be spent on doing better science. Of course, merely because $2b can purchase a new telescope doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile to do a robotic mission if the science and engineering aspects involved are new and exciting enough, or if the robotic equipment could be used for future time/money saving work.

If its going to be a relatively routine job, then maybe its better to say a fond farewell to Hubble and build a new space telescope drawing on all the lessons learnt from Hubble's shortcomings.

Idunno, to me Hubble is more of just an excuse than a goal - NASA wants to develop robotics as an alternative to EVA. I remember designs in the 90s for a "Canad-Hand" to go on the arm. I think NASA just wants an opportunity to develop this technology so they don't have to risk more astronauts, and Hubble is a popular plaform to build support for it.

I'd be willing to wager that if NASA came out and asked for money to research orbital robotic technology they would have gotten it. One of the early designs for the Shuttle was a low Earth orbit system, similar to the shuttle of today, coupled with a permanently orbiting robotic booster. The booster would carry payloads into higher orbits.

That project was canned because it more or less put human pilots in the back seat. I don't blame NASA. Once you take humans out of the loop, you kinda remove 90% of the

The Nasa beurocracy has found a 'perfect' happy equlibrium. Outsource actual launches so there is no real risk. Continue to draw the huge budget on the grounds of 'return to flight'. Billion dollar budgets to do nothing but write reports, a beaurocrats dream come true.

The shuttle will never fly again. There will always be 'one more report showing yet another problem' to prevent that. In the meantime, the budget that used to get spent funding actual launches, is now burned up doing reports justifying

or if the robotic equipment could be used for future time/money saving work.

It seems nearly inevitable that we would learn things from the robotic mission that will apply in the future.

Consider that once you have a telepresence system in space, it becomes fairly simple to accomplish in-orbit refueling (including the telepresence system itself if it's durable enough for that). If such a system can be established as a long term space presence, it would tend to greatly reduce the consequences of failure

I dare say that while robotics research is a lofty goal, this is the wrong mission for it. We can study telerobotics just fine on Earth, and there are a pile of undersea applications that are far more technicalogically challenging, with more direct applications to everyday problems.

When we say that 1 or 2 billion is going to research, that is the opening bid. Spending 1 or 2 billion to keep an obsolete telescope aloft is a bad use of R&D. Bad with a capital B. Especially since there is no advantage to

With all the money that goes into sending the spacecraft up, getting the robot out, having him do whatever, then having him either blow up or come down burning, wouldn't it just be easier to make a new one, add in a robotic arm or two so it can do self-repairs, and send that up?

1) The Shuttle is a waste of time and money. It should be grounded, and the remaining shuttles given to the Smithsonian.2) The Space Station is useless too. Time to just declare victory in the War against low Earth orbit, and bring it down.3) The replacement vehicles suggested for the Space Shuttle are scaled-up and enhanced Apollo capsules. We should just be buying Soyuz from the Russians. It works, it's safe. We'll never use it because it was Not Invented Here. Stupid. In case you

1) Yep.2) Not quite, but we should finish the ISS using no more than 8 more shuttle flights, then all soyuz and USA/ESA expendable rockets. Hey, invite the Chinese to the party, too. Is it the INTERNATIONAL space station, or not? Snubbing the Chinese is a profoundly stupid thing to do; we'd be well served to have parts of the ISS coming up from China, Europe, Japan, Brazil, Russia, Canada, the USA, and anyone else with the mettle to fly vehicles there.3) We should seriously consider buying soyuz from the russians even as we develop further launchers. Apollo had a -LOT- of things right, shame we scrapped it.4) Going to Mars is only dumb if we don't plant roots there and establish a manned presence.5) I wholeheartedly agree that hubble should be extened robotically. Worst case, we fund R&D for some kickass robotic technology that we can use elsewhere in space or even down here. The problem is that the max price for the robotic mission is projected at $2 BILLION (2,000 x 1,000,000). Sending a shuttle to fix it with carbon based units is a $900 Million proposition. I say take volunteers for a risky shuttle flight and fix it with humans, then spend a smaller budget on a robotic grand finale that would enhance hubble one last time followed by a remote controled electrodynamic tether that would bring hubble in to its inceneration.

The problem is that the max price for the robotic mission is projected at $2 BILLION (2,000 x 1,000,000).

Consider it either as a 2 billion dollar robotics/telepresence in space project and we get Hubble for free, or a 1.1 billion dollar robotics project and a 900 million dollar fix to Hubble and we test the robotics for free.

It's easier to justify as a robotics mission where Hubble represents a real world test and cost offset than it is to justify 900 million and the human and shuttle risks just for

Stupid question, If it costs as much as another hubble up there , why are we not building another one and send it up again ?.

Secondly, why isn't ISS going anywhere in comparison ?. Also that's a more international project for space. I hated the canadian reference... Also sadly the guy in charge wants to last out till Sept 2005 (you know nothing good or bad happens in the last months of retirement).

Last century, most of the world (with notable exceptions), expected america to do the Right Thing. That's past now (see the Thermonuclear reactor project) and in 4 short YEARS.

If it costs as much as another hubble up there , why are we not building another one and send it up again ?

Politics.

It's probably less expensive to replace than to repair, but replacement seems to have been pretty low on the radar. Part of that is because repair money could come out of the manned/exploration program, while a replacement would probably come out of the space science budget.

There's also the fact that a robotic repair mission would serve as an excellent opportunity to learn a lot more about robotics in space, something that is very valuable in it self. Both NASA and ESA have sent up missions that do basically nothing but test new technology. This would be new technology that does something very useful other than "being new".

- Knock on the door of Space Station Mir, then fly off.- Play Rock'em Sock'em robot with the satellites.- Give the finger to Canada when orbiting overhead (I kid, I kid...)- Play air guitar...in space!- Combine with other robots to make one gigantic super robot.

However, the price tag of the robotic mission is between $1 billion and $2 billion, almost the cost of a new space telescope.

Heck, you could shave a few hundred thousand off that pricetag if you built a new HST around the "backup" primary mirror made by Kodak [kodak.com] (which was figured and tested correctly). NASA would just have to get it from The National Air and Space Museum [si.edu].

I'd suggest that the folks at SpaceShipOne could do it for a lot less money. Heck, set up a contest for it - then you're encouraging innovation in the field. With the savings you could garner you could probably divert that to other projects... or buy more $10k toilet seats.

No one else has the capability right now except perhaps the Russians. Scaled Composites isn't an option at this time. They don't have the skill set or the technology. From what I hear, this thing needs to get done by 2007.

Technology? No, they (being the contract-winner) probably wouldn't. But I'll bet Boeing, Lockheed or others would be happy to subcontract.

Actually, that's probably who will build the equipment, if it happens. My beef here is that NASA will provide, as usual, a cost-plus contract and it won't matter financially to the contractor (though the contractor might take a reputation hit if they don't work it right) whether Hubble gets repaired or not. In any case, it's going to require a lot of infrastructure th

In order to reach the Hubble a Soyuz would have to be launched from the equator rather than Kazakhstan (where they are now currently launched). As it so happens, the Russians have signed a deal with the European Space Agency to allow them to launch Soyuzes from French Guiana starting in 2006. Additionally the costs of launch are so low, that 3 missions to Hubble could be planned for less than the one mentioned here, or two shuttle missions.

Actually, it *has* been contracted out. This MSNBC [msn.com] article talks about the robot, developed by MD Robotics [mdrobotics.ca], the company that brought you Canadarm 1 and 2 (aka the dextrous manipulator).

The problem with Hubble is that it's designed to be serviced by humans- there are very few targets for vison-based positioning, and just undoing the bolts requires a lot of dexterity. Imagine building a robot that could open up your machine and replace a pci card. (Watch out for those IDE and power supply cables!) Successfu

Um, yeah, next time he has to buy a toilet that sucks his ass into it to prevent his shit from staining the insides of the shuttle windows, as well as trapping and disposing of waste methane so as not to suffocate his fellow astronuts with his horrible anal stench, let's see him come up with something cheaper...

How urgent are these repairs to Hubble? Realistically speaking, if NASA is only debating to whether to spend $2,000,000,000 now, it's going to be several years before anything gets off the ground. So clearly the repairs aren't that urgent. Wouldn't it then make more sense to spend the cash and resources on improving/fixing/replacing the shuttles, so that we can safely send humans to do the job?

Wouldn't it then make more sense to spend the cash and resources on improving/fixing/replacing the shuttles, so that we can safely send humans to do the job?

I really think that NASA has a lot of dirty little secrets that no one on the outside knows about, and after this last accident they probably looked close and hard and realized that the number of places the shuttle could catastrophically fail is more than they originally thought.

If there was another shuttle failure (even if it did not result in the loss of life) I suspect that there would be a noticeable chorus to dismantle the agency, that cannot produce very much more than kitsch science and photo ops with school children on the ground.

Though unspoken, I think the three strikes and you're out rule may be in place here. NASA since apollo has always been an agency with self-survival first in mind, so I would not be surprised if they find a way to retire the shuttles to museums.

So much as replacing the shuttles - I do not think that this will even be considered for the next decade as the cost is too steep. It was hard to justify the shuttles when they were first built (and the reason that the space station was built) in the seventies.

But as can be seen, the space station can work with cheap Russian rockets that are more reliable than the shuttle.

The Hubble was designed so it could be serviced by the shuttle (the other justification for the shuttle). But if the Hubble was designed so that parts could be replaced by dockable unmanned rockets, we would not be in this position we are today with it. For an instant, if the power supply and gyros were on a small module that could dock using conventional rockets. But it is not.

When O'Keefe said that a repair mission to Hubble was "too dangerous," people should have recognized that that was code words for "we need to ground the shuttle permanently now."

The fact is that there are earth based telescopes that are catching up in performance to the Hubble. Add to that the fact that the Hubble is old technology, it's pretty obvious that it's time to move on.

It truly would be a better decision to take the many lessons learned from Hubble design and repair and put those in a new telescope, and send it to orbit on a unmanned rocket.

I'd say that the people doing cost/benefit analyses and robotic repair feasibility studies are engineers, not scientists. The guys that got hung out to dry by the early mirror troubles, the ongoing gyroscope troubles and the recent "drop everything: We're going to Mars" troubles, they're scientists.

I can see de-orbiting an old, useless analog comsat as being sensible. But for stuff which would otherwise continue to usefully function for years or decades, write-off due to non catastrophic failure ought not to be the natural option. The US space program suffers from an attention deficit disorder.

Here's my conspiracy theory of the day; "drop everything: We're going to Mars" is just a distraction to screw those atheist astrophycists who are dabbling in things they shouldn't (origin of universe etc).

"If the cost hits $2 billion, that's three to four times what it would cost to send astronauts to do the job as they have four times before and as NASA planned before the Columbia disaster."

Although we have got a lot of good from NASA and the technology they developed, the shuttle seems to be a giant money pit sucking up money that could be spent on maybe a replacement for the current shuttles. Sure the current shuttles are reusable, but after the Colombia disaster they were used a lot less than what they

If there's anything currently in orbit worth the risk of a space shuttle mission, it would be the servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA's administration hasn't put forth a compelling reason why they should be much more risk adverse than they were before. Frankly, it appears to me that the Hubble Telescope is just a pawn in some political game.

NASA's administration hasn't put forth a compelling reason why they should be much more risk adverse than they were before.

It's not really the administration. I'm sure they care about the astronaut's, but if the money, the approval, and the astronauts informed consent are there I'm sure most of them would happily send them up.

It's the American People, and our reaction to losing people (no matter whether they wanted to be there or not) that is the source of the fear. If NASA screws up again soon and anybo

A swing and a miss. During preview I noticed the phrase "astronaut's consent" needed an apostrophe, but I hit the wrong instance of "astronauts". Oops. I should know better than to post at 2:30am local time.

It's the American People, and our reaction to losing people (no matter whether they wanted to be there or not) that is the source of the fear. If NASA screws up again soon and anybody dies, they probably fear they will be dissolved. Don't know if that's a real problem... I consider it more likely they would simple be emasculated such that they were still a huge money sink, but too underfunded to actually do anything, a sort of "worst of both worlds" scenario.

That's completely wrong in reality it's all about the spin they fabricate. If losing people was really the issue, then look at the cost benefit equation. A defined risk, 2% probablity of losing the staff, with a 1% probability of not achieving mission (1 launch, one re-entry failure, on just over 100 missions). 4 people required for an hst service mission. 0.02*4 = 0.08 lives the real cost of a hubble service mission in lives.

If they're not going to fix it, I'd like to understand why they must crash it down into the ocean? If they're going to send a propulsion module up there, why don't they move the Hubble to a Lagrange point between the Earth and moon?

I realize that it will probably take years to get there but I've seen a few proposals for future space stations being placed at the Lagrange points - wouldn't it be nice if they had a high-quality (maybe not as good as when launched) set of optics waiting to be used in a station observatory? I realize that there is a (very) good chance of this never happening, but it seems a damn sight better than crashing Hubble into the Pacific.

Because the stuff on it that's not expected to totally disintegrate has too large of a footprint and is statistically dangerous. The primary is going to come down as a big hunk of hot glass, propellant tanks will probably survive, as well as some other bits.

It's also cheaper to build a new telescope than it is to try to figure out a way to get the existing HST into a station in some other orbit.

you're right about HST-- I just did a double check and couldn't find any propellant tanks. I had guessed they would be there for maintaining orbit, but shuttle probably does that during servicing.

Propellants (esp hydrazine) does leave icky stuff on optics, but they get put on board some telescopes anyway and managed very carefully on some missions. If you're out at L2 you need them to maintain the orbit, and probably to desaturate reaction wheels.

L1, L2, and L3 are semi-stable -- they're stable perpendicular to the axis of the two massive bodies, and unstable along that axis. That makes station-keeping pretty easy, but it still needs to be done. L4 and L5 are fully stable. As for it being unsafe to leave things, I had actually meant that you can't just leave Hubble where it is until it completely fails and then forget about it. But, even at one of the Lagrange points, it poses a hazard to other things you might like to put at that point later.

I don't quite understand what the debate is. Even if the mission fails and billions of dollars are "wasted", it will not all be in vain. Using robotics like this are exploring a new frontier of space exploration. The first few manned shuttle orbits weren't risky? Of course they are! The Columbia accident proves that they still are today. Money is valuable, but exploring new scientific frontiers is much more valuable.

NASA is always short of cash, and I think we could probably learn a lot more by sending up 4 replacement hubbles and using them than trying a robotic repair mission that leaves us without any telescope at all.

What they ought to do is put the money towards designing a space elevator. They could stick a telescope...or somehow get the hubble...onto the mass that would hold the carbon fiber ribbon taunt.
Then they could just climb up and down the elevator to make repairs. This would be cheaper (per trip...not as a whole project), and a heck of a lot more innovative than making robots to fix Hubble.

I suspect a space elevator would vibrate too much for Hubble to work with. The reason it's out by itself in the high orbit and not attached to a manned station is to avoid dust, gas, heat and vibration. Even a really well damped elevator would probably blur Hubble images horribly.

An elevator would be a better way to lift parts or a replacement though.

C'mon people...we don't always have to choose between lowering the water or raising the bridge.

That said, I'm puzzled why the Hubble guy is pushing robotics. That's like a popsicle sales manager suggesting the company start selling hotdogs, instead of finding a way to improve sales of raspberry 'sicles.

Look a story down at the hydrogen development... this could change the world on a much bigger scale than anything...effecting us right here ont eh ground right away. 2 billion can do so much good right here.

Yeah, I sort of hate the idea of not looking toward the stars even for a moment, but look around here, things are pretty messed up, and I dont like the dependence on gas and oil. 2 billion could go towards alot of infrastructure for hydrogen cars.

What is not needed is hydrogen powered cars but a viable means to generate the power to make hydrogen (energy) readily available for everyone. Molecular hydrogen as demanded by the "hydrogen economy" is very simply a medium with which energy is physically transfered. Gasoline is as much of an energy transport medium as hydrogen.

Both hydrogen and gasoline can be used to generate electrical energy, gasoline and its hydrocarbon cousins however release the carbon part of their hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons can be

Yeah, and all the research money Faraday, Maxwell, Marconi, Rutherford, Bohr, Watson+Crick, etc wasted on mere 'science' would have better been spent perfecting metal bearings for carriage cartwheels, right?

Look a story down at the hydrogen development... this could change the world on a much bigger scale than anything...effecting us right here ont eh ground right away. 2 billion can do so much good right here.

Umm, you might want to take a look at the projects funded by DOE. Many of them are in the realm of better energy resources, including hydrogen power, as well as fusion.

I dont like the dependence on gas and oil. 2 billion could go towards alot of infrastructure for hydrogen cars.

Apples and oranges, 2 billion for funding 'hydrogen car infrastructure' doesn't necessarily have to come from Hubble. Besides, if Hubble were cut, chances are that the money 'saved' would just be diverted to Iraq or otherwise be lost in a myriad of other government pork.

Anyway, you're pretty short-sighted. Like I said before, if the world were populated with people like you, than today we'd have highly-optimized horse-drawn carriages and cobbled roads, without the money-wasting inconveniences of digital electronics, for example.

Anyway, you're pretty short-sighted. Like I said before, if the world were populated with people like you, than today we'd have highly-optimized horse-drawn carriages and cobbled roads, without the money-wasting inconveniences of digital electronics, for example.

You're assuming that we are better off *with* the "inconveniences"...perhaps highly-optimized horse-drawn carriages and cobbled roads aren't such a bad idea, after all...

If, as I understand it, the robots would be brought down and destroyed after the mission anyway, why couldn't NASA get some more use out of them?

Put cameras on them with a feed to Earth, this is not that hard to do. Have the two robots slug it out in orbit over the Pacific, maybe with the moon as a backdrop, and drop 'em into the Pacific after that.

It probably strikes as a bit off-the-wall, but could have several benefits...the sale of advertising during the program could pay a decent bit of the bill, and hey, we need to do SOMETHING to get people aware that yes, there actually is something out there past the atmosphere. Might raise support for funding in several ways...for one, not needing so much of it (the advertisers), and for another, raising public awareness.

Yes, I'm advocating a publicity stunt. That's what seems to get people's attention.

The University of Arizona is currently working on the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT)- see: http://www.nd.edu/~science/core/binocular/index.sh tml [nd.edu]. The thing has twin 8.4 meter mirrors- their light gathering power is equivalent to a single 11.8 meter telescope, and their resolving power is equivalent to a 22.8 meter telescope. It is supposed to have more light gathering power and much sharper images than Hubble http://www.nd.edu/~science/core/binocular/lbt_othe rtelescopes.shtml [nd.edu]. Supposedly the LBT is be able to get around the blurring from the atmosphere by using adaptive optics- deforming the secondary mirrors to correct for distortions. They claim that the construction costs are $80 million. So, an order of magnitude more resolution for an order of magnitude less money. If it performs even close to specifications, it sounds like a good deal. The dedication ceremony has already taken place and the thing is supposed to be operational in 2006.

Supposedly the LBT is be able to get around the blurring from the atmosphere by using adaptive optics- deforming the secondary mirrors to correct for distortions.

Hmmm, yet another post that assumes telescope resolution is the one parameter that determines which telescope is best. A quick analogy would be to claim which is better - a monitor resolution with 1024x768 at 24 bit color, or 3200x2400 resolution with 1 bit color. The answer, of course, is that it depends on your application.

Questions about this project:

Adaptive Optics (AO) usually need a reference star nearby, or an artificial star produced w/ laser. What limitations will this produce in the images?

How does this limit the area of the sky they can look at?

What is the wavelength 'bandwidth' of the telescope, accounting for atmospheric absorption as well as sensor design?

A good deal of astronomical science is done with spectra. What artifacts are introduced into the spectra through absorption and emission lines of the atmosphere?

What artifacts are introduced to the spectra through artificial star for the AO?

How long are the integrations that this telescope observe for? Hubble Deep Field was integrated for 150 orbits (10 days). Can this project integrate for a similar time, observing similar magnitude faint galaxies (sometimes individual photons), while maintaining a similar SNR?

What is the limit for observing faint objects with this groundbased scope? Ie, the noise floor of a ground-based scope is much higher due to scattered 'light pollution', and it would be harder to see fainter objects.

So basically, image resolution is only one of several important factors and limitations in doing astronomical science.

As I used to be out in AZ and am and astronomer I'll take a quick hack:
2. Large telescope = small field. The f/15 field of view is 8 x 4 arcminutes
3. 0.3-400 microns. Accounting for atmospheric seeing. . well that's questionable, but close to that big of a span (I'm not ready to fight atmospheric windows over collecting area today)
4. The same absorption lines we see in all spectra. That's why we takes standards and off source spectra as well with any telescope.
6.Using the 90 inch I've done hour inte

The problem is which way will people whine about the most. When astronauts are lost NASA is bombarded with "Save the Astronauts!" slogans. Lots of BS about why we should send robots instead of people.

Then when the price tag for sending robots into space is talked about people start screaming "Why are we doing that? Send astronauts instead! It's cheaper."

It is decisions by committee and it works in the same way as if you were driving a bus down a multilane freeway at the beginning of rush hour with a cloth tied over your eyes. Your only method of knowing what to do is what everyone on the bus is trying to tell you. So everyone gets to scream out what they want the bus driver to do and then he tries to react to the orders. And just like the bus - NASA is going willy-nilly down the freeway trying not to hit anyone, trying to apease each and every person on the bus, and to reach the destination each and every one on the bus is screaming at them to go to. It is a thankless, almost impossible task to perform.

The people of America need to realize just how stupid their over-the-top reactions to problems with space travel are. This isn't Star Trek, BattleStar Galactica, Star Wars, or any of the other truly great (IMHO) space shows. The physics alone are no where near the same. Yet these TV/Movie shows are what are held up as being totally correct and truthful. Further, when someone dies (as in Star Wars when trying to take out the Death Star) no one goes "Wait! Oh my GOD! Think about the insurance! Oi-vey! What about the children? His/Her wife/husband? Friends, relatives, and countrymen? Who's going to pay for all of this?" Everyone goes "Oh Wow! Did you see that? His head flew off into the window next to where Luke was trying to save Obiwan!"

So what am I trying to get at? The country needs to decide, once and for all, whether it is worth the lives of our astronauts to send people into space. If it is - stop complaining and start supporting that way of going into space. If it isn't - stop complaining about the cost and lend your support to the cause. The main thing is - you can't have it both ways. Either people are going to die up there or we are going to probably bankrupt the country trying to build a robot capable of doing everything a human can do.

And don't think that just because businesses are starting to get into the space business that things are going to change for the better. The problem isn't going to go away just because you've changed who is going into space. It doesn't work like that. You are still going to have people dying up there if you send them up there. You just will have more of them dying at one time. Just like in an airplane crash.

This is where I strongly resent the way my tax dollars are being used. I have long been a proponent of more manned space missions. I am also a strong oponent of the way the government currently spends a lot of its money. We're in a government-created budget deficit that will make it impossible to support "entitlement" programs of the future. We will wind up with loads of discretionary spending being cut off entirely just because we have to continue to service our national debt.

And don't think that just because businesses are starting to get into the space business that things are going to change for the better. The problem isn't going to go away just because you've changed who is going into space. It doesn't work like that. You are still going to have people dying up there if you send them up there. You just will have more of them dying at one time. Just like in an airplane crash.

So every time there's a fatal car accident, we have national days of mourning and convene investiga

Like most people, you totally miss the point: astronauts are ten a penny, losing a few is no big deal.

Shuttles, on the other hand, are politically irreplaceable: Endeavour was only built because we had most of the parts already, and the rest could be cobbled together for a couple of billion. Today there's no way to build a replacement shuttle cheaply, and with retirement announced in 2010 there's no point... it would get to fly a couple of times and then retire.

If a shuttle is lost servicing Hubble then you have only two left. One of those will usually be in maintenance, so that cuts your effective shuttle fleet by 50%. There's no way that ISS could be finished in that case.

Not that ISS should be finished, or should even have been started, in my opinion. But even a 1% chance of losing a shuttle and therefore losing a large portion of ISS upgrades is more than NASA want to risk.

NASA has a long string of robotics failures.
Except the little rovers from JPL, which is really a unit of Caltech, very little good has come out of NASA in robotics. They attract good people and put them into NASA's underperforming organization, wasting America's robotics talent.

Those interested in the various alternatives to repairing or replacing the Hubble Space Telescope may be interested in this article [thespacereview.com] from a few weeks ago that reviews an interim "Analyses of Alternatives" report by a third party, the Aerospace Corporation. This report concludes that a robotic repair mission would cost about the same as a shuttle repair mission or building and launching replacement telescope(s), but carries a far lower probability of success. It should be noted that this is an interim report

The current state of the scope is that there is NO money for new telescopes other then the Webb telescope

I don't see why we can't just dust off the original Hubble blueprints and make an exact copy (but this time check the focus). There would be next to zero development costs. It would be just parts and labor.

If artificial barriers like budget classifications for "new telescope" vs "repair mission" is a problem, just say that this is a field service mission that happens to be replacing 100% of the Hubbl

And we'd still have to get up there to put it in place. If we're going to do that, might as well just service what's already up there. There's nothing wrong with the Hubble that isn't module-replacable. Replacing the modules and reboosting it would make it every bit as good as a new replacement based on the same blueprints. Actually using the existing one is better because there's a few tons of stuff that don't need to be boosted to orbit.

The other problem is that now we have several earth based telescopes that are as good as Hubble in the normal optical range. An exact Hubble replacement would be a huge waste not to mention that the cost of launching it would be high. Right now the ONLY launch vehical you could use is the shuttle. I would guess that it might be possible to modify it to fit on a Titan IV, Ariane V, or maybe Sealaunch "I am not sure if the Sealaunch has the lift". A robotic mission would be good since we would learn something

Actually it makes me yearn for what we could do with 1960s technology. Imagine the size of mirror you could boost with a Saturn V. There are where improved Saturn Vs on the drawing board that had an even bigger lift:( Just imagine a space telescope the size of Skylab? Yes I know that we could use segmented mirrors now but think if the size of a segmented mirror you could boost with a Saturn V.

Frankly it maybe that space based telescopes from now on will tend to be for the parts of the spectrum that our at

And besides, it's science. Who cares whether or not the money gets spent on some piece of lens up in the sky.

If the Hubble gets repaired, the money spent on the robotics can be reused and the development will not go waste. But if we were to rebuild the Hubble, there is no real progress - we're just reinventing the wheel.

And another idea is the idea of organizing a contest on the redesign of Hubble -- cheapest guys get X% of the amount as the prize money. Or something.

Contests like this won't work. There is too specific a goal. You also are running with the implicit assumption that the cheapest is somehow the best. A shoebox with a lense and a CCD would be a pretty cheap space based telescope. But it would not be very useful.

You also run into the problem of launch platforms. Are you going to force the teams to use an existing platform, and which one (Soyuz, Atlas, etc.) If you pick the launch platform, then you have done a good chunk of the R&D, at which you have t

The current state of the scope is that there is NO money for new telescopes other then the Webb telescope, but it's a radio scope and not an optical one (even though it's being sold as a Hubble replacement).

This was modded insightful? The Webb/NGST will be a near-IR telescope, not a radio telescope. As such, it is a partial replacement for the Hubble, as there is significant overlap in the wavelengths for which each were/will be used. If you consider perhaps the main purpose of the Webb/NGST to be high-z observations, then it's even more clearly a replacement for the Hubble.

For non-sciencey types, the light from a long way away (high-z in the jargon) gets "stretched" (red-shifted by the expansion of the universe) as it travels so light that was visible when it set out on its journey has a longer wavelength ("near infra-red") when it arrives here.

If there's a real desire to have a Hubble class visible-wavelength telescope in space, it's probably cheaper and lower risk to build a new one. As it is, the Hubble repair is going to eat into the budgets of other missions that are already well into development, delaying them and increasing their costs. The money to fix Hubble is going to come out of other astronomy missions (at least in part).

Repairing Hubble is fairly high risk-- not all the technology is in hand, there are unknowns on Hubble (will the

The problem with putting a telescope (or any other facility, for that matter) at L2, or any of the other Lagrange points, is that their location puts them out of the orbits reachable by the Shuttle for repair purposes. All maintenance would have to be done robotically, and considering the delta-V to return any robotic craft to LEO, it's likely that the service robots would be single-use only.

For those not space-science oriented, the Lagrange points (L1 through L5) are points in space around any two orbit

The problem with putting a telescope (or any other facility, for that matter) at L2, or any of the other Lagrange points, is that their location puts them out of the orbits reachable by the Shuttle for repair purposes.

I haven't really seen any convincing arguments for repair over replacement of any mission-- the shuttle missions to repair Hubble are not cheap, and the way NASA accounts for cost seems to generally neglect launch cost if it's using the shuttle, but include it if you're using expendables.

The Lagrange points and Earth-trailing orbit are both becoming popular for space telescopes because they provide very good observing environments compared to LEO.

L2 is a particularly good location for radio telescopes, as the moon shields anything in that position from radio-wavelength signals from Earth. The downside of course is that to report the data back, a repeater is needed, either in polar lunar orbit (so that it forms a halo around the moon) or in a halo orbit around L2. The telescope itself,

I think we're talking about different L2 points-- Earth-Sun L2 is popular for missions other than radio (JWST, Herschel/Planck) and doesn't have comm problems-- it's actually ideal for comm, since the earth is more or less always in the same spot (spacecraft actually fly quasi-halo orbits that aren't right on the lagrange point. I think you're referring to Earth-Moon L2.

As far as I can tell, all costs of the shuttle program that aren't payload are "hidden" in the shuttle program costs and don't get bookke

You're correct, I was referring to Earth-Moon L2, not Sun-Earth L2. Sorry about the confusion.

I can see why Earth-Sun L2, L4, and L5 would be ideal for comm- at any of them not only is the Earth in more-or-less the same spot, but also half the glove is visible at any given time. Not necessarily the same half, but you get the point...

I hate to bust your bubble, but most of the pictures you see from the hubble are false-color. The engineers at JPL recieve packets of data that are fed into a pile of transform equations before pictures pop out.

Well, it is most likely that the robots will be pretty single minded about this mission. But, unlike the early apollo missions, NASA does a better paper trial and documents much better. In addition, this mission will enable us to test al sorts of new control systems for doing robotics. Some will be total manula, some semi-autonomous, and others full-autonomous. If we can get to the point where we can give instructions to robots to preform a task and not worry about how it does the task, than it allows us to